Dix jury hears defendants discuss 'a lot of damage'

For nearly 40 minutes one night in March 2007, Dritan Duka and his two brothers sat in his Cherry Hill home listening intently to "Constants of Jihad," a recording they had downloaded from the internet.

The lecture, from a Yemeni cleric, called Muslims to arms and urged them to consider themselves holy warriors when others call them terrorists.

"I'm going to start something," Duka said the next day, according to recordings played yesterday at his terrorism conspiracy trial in Camden. "We have enough people. We are seven of us . . . You can do a lot of damage, seven people."

That conversation, like others captured that day by an undercover FBI informant, lacked any discussion of a timetable or a specific target, such as Fort Dix. But as much as any evidence introduced since the trial opened six weeks ago, it seemed to support, without much help from the government, prosecutors' contention that Duka and his brothers were considering a jihad.

The informant, an illegal immigrant named Besnik Bakalli, had befriended Shain, Dritan and Eljvir Duka the previous summer, in return for an FBI pledge to help him win legal U.S. residency.

Like the brothers, Bakalli was an ethnic Albanian. He also told them he was a Muslim, although he wasn't. By the winter of 2007, the brothers and Bakalli openly but cautiously shared their opinions on Muslim persecution worldwide and whether to fight.

"Even if you know them well, but don't talk to anyone about this," Shain Duka told the informant that February. "Because they will cuff you for no reason, Besnik. They will cuff you for nothing."

Prosecutors say the men comprised a homegrown terror cell, intent on attacking Fort Dix or another local base. The Dukas and their co-defendants, Mohamad Shnewer and Serdar Tatar, have denied any conspiracy, arguing that two unsavory informants and overzealous agents concocted a plot and that prosecutors stitched together pieces of their conversations to support it.

In one conversation played for jurors yesterday, Shain Duka, then 25, quipped that he first wanted to get married before sacrificing himself. He said maybe they could send money to Muslims in other countries, but acknowledged that he and his brothers lacked the courage to act themselves.

"We just talk, we know," he told Bakalli.

His eldest brother was more impassioned, according to the tapes. "I am ready," declared Dritan Duka, then 28. Shain Duka asked if that meant joining a jihad overseas.

"No, I say here," Dritan Duka said. "Hit them here."

Five days later, Deputy U.S. Attorney William Fitzpatrick pointed out, the eldest Duka asked the second FBI informant to get him AK-47 assault rifles.

Defense attorneys have tried to downplay the inflammatory rhetoric and al Qaeda videos and highlight what they say was a lack of organization, consensus or planning needed for a conspiracy.

Under cross-examination by Shnewer's attorney, Rocco Cipparone, the informant said the men led him to believe that a week-long trip to the Pocono Mountains in February 2007 would be a vacation.

"They said we were going to have a lot of fun," Bakalli testified. "They said we're going to the swimming pool. We're going to eat steaks."

Bakalli's recorder was running as they went to a rifle range the second morning. On the tape, played for jurors, the informant cursed, frantically pleaded with the others to be careful, threatened to leave the scene, then worriedly called his FBI contact.

"I was scared," he said, explaining that two teenagers with the Dukas were firing the guns wildly. "They were just shooting. It was very dangerous."

Cipparone also challenged Bakalli's recollection that the defendants rode horses there in order to train for a jihad. "Where in America were you going to ride horses to attack military personnel?" he asked.

Bakalli said the Dukas never mentioned a specific target but said that horses could help them escape if they were near mountains. He said U.S. soldiers were lazy and would not chase them.

John P. Martin may be reached at jmartin@starledger.com or (609) 989-0379.